Cristin Tierney Gallery is pleased to present No place out of the wind, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Debbi Kenote. This marks the artist’s first solo show with the gallery, and will be on view from Friday, April 3rd, through Saturday, May 9th. An opening reception will take place on Friday, April 10th, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM, with the artist present.
No place out of the wind continues Kenote’s exploration of shaped painting as both image and object. Inspired by visual motifs—such as interlocking geometries and natural forms—each canvas starts with a stretcher customized by the artist before it is stretched and layered with oil paint. The support beam becomes a primary compositional element of her paintings, creating complex forms that extend the work into space. Inspired by her upbringing in the Pacific Northwest, where she was exposed to craft traditions such as woodworking and quilting, plus her background in sculpture, Kenote approaches the canvas as a site of construction as much as surface.
While heavily rooted in abstraction, Kenote’s poetry practice often informs the emotions, memories, and meanings transcribed in her paintings. The exhibition’s title, drawn from a poem written by the artist and borrowed from Annie Dillard’s essay “Total Eclipse,” suggests a journey characterized by exposure and the ensuing search for shelter. Poetry operates as a generative structure. As the artist notes, “In general, as I experience analytical moments in life, I gather them into the medium of poetry. Over time, these poems accumulate and become the source material for my drawing practice. In my drawings, I depict an aesthetic environment that mirrors my experience, as well as physical objects and places that become doorways into abstract painting. Often, plant life and simple geometric forms—a leaf, a circle, a seed, a triangle—form their own lexicon, which I use to tell a story.”
In the shaped painting Meant to Scatter, layered forms suggest upward movement while a solitary sphere rests in precarious balance. Growth and dispersal happen amid abstract shapes that suggest containment, creating compositional tension. In X to Ex, overlapping linear forms imply the familiar mark of an “X,” recalling childhood maps and imagined destinations. Here, the symbol shifts from signifier to barrier, echoing the subtle transformation implied in the work’s title. Across the presentation, circular motifs recur not as symbols to decode, but as anchors within compositions.
By rethinking the canvas as a constructed form, Kenote merges spatial theory with the language of formal abstraction. She focuses on craft-based methods and weaves hand-built authorship and tactility into surfaces imbued with memory, feeling, tradition, and esoterica. In No place out of the wind, painting becomes an act of building: a careful negotiation between the elements and their reprieve, where structure itself carries emotional weight.
Debbi Kenote (b. 1991, Anacortes, WA) is an abstract painter who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Having studied both painting and sculpture, she blends these traditions into her approach, threading the needle between the two media with her shaped canvases. Kenote holds an MFA in Sculpture from Brooklyn College and a BFA in Painting from Western Washington University. Her recent solo exhibitions include Baker-Hall in Miami, Duran Contemporain in Montreal, and My Pet Ram in New York. Selected group exhibitions include Kate Werble in New York, Fir Gallery in Beijing, Cob Gallery in London, Hawkins Headquarters in Atlanta, and SOIL Gallery in Seattle. She has been an artist-in-residence at Stove Works, the Ucross Foundation, PLOP, the Saltonstall Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, DNA, Nes, CAI Projects, and the Mineral School. Her work is part of the permanent OZ Art Collection and has been featured in The Art Newspaper, Art Fuse, Maake Magazine, Suboart, Art of Choice, Two Coats of Paint, and Hyperallergic. In 2026, she will be an artist-in-residence at the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency.
